And sometimes the impact is small, but sometimes it’s significant, and is even “remembered” from one game to the next.
In a handful of situations, the choice combines a story branch with a moral component. The other type of choice is intended as a moral or ethical challenge, requiring you to roleplay Shepard to reflect the type of character you want to be, without major impact on the story (e.g., after you defeat the Thorian on Feros, what do you do with the asari it was holding captive). There are two kinds of choices: One is simply a story branch, where you choose between actions, or allies, or other alternatives that cause the narrative to play out in different ways (for example, consider the number of paths you can take to get permission from Noveria authorities to leave their HQ and go check out Peak 15). One of the hallmarks of Mass Effect is the frequent requirement for you, as the character, to make a choice, the impact of which can be felt on the story that follows. One of the most noticeable problems, popping up over and over, is how it abandons the “meaningful choice” model established by the previous trilogy, and in BioWare games in general. The game displays, in general, a strange fear of committing to anything that might challenge or alienate the player. This is obviously something the game’s designers recognized as an issue, and thought about, and considered building into the game as a departure from the norm: can you still be the hero protagonist if you’re freely mooching off the people you’re supposedly trying to help? Except that they don’t commit to the innovation, sticking to the conventional “unrestrained looting” model most of the time, while occasionally deviating to the apparent alternative, which does nothing but call attention to the weirdness of the convention.
Until you crack open a container, at which point someone shouts, “They’re stealing our stuff!” and then the scavengers open fire. But occasionally, the scavengers don’t react with hostility indeed, they don’t react at all, milling about their camp and ignoring you. On a couple of the big worlds, there are scavenger camps where desperate people are scrabbling for survival the moment you roll up, they start shooting, trying to defend their stash. You might even be able to accept it as a convention of the genre, a necessary mechanic that doesn’t bear close consideration, except that BioWare seems to be aware of it, and includes moments where it’s directly commented on. This makes sense in a story where you’re going behind enemy lines and raiding your adversaries’ supplies to sustain your offensive, but here, you’re supposed to be helping these people, and it’s strange and jarring. Which makes it very strange when you roll into somebody’s camp, agree to help them solve some dilemma, and then ransack their storage containers, stealing their weapons and water filters and raw mineral resources and anything else you find, and leaving them, apparently, with empty boxes.
See, as the Pathfinder, you are responsible for helping these intergalactic colonists cope with the challenges of their new environment people are struggling with resource shortages, limited food and water, and other problems.
The problem with Andromeda, though, is that the typical loot system doesn’t make sense in the context of the story, and breaks the suspension of disbelief necessary to maintain the player’s interest and emotional engagement. By contrast, the sequel, Mass Effect 2, dispenses with loot entirely, limiting the player to gear purchased directly from in-game vendors.Īndromeda goes back to the original Mass Effect model, featuring a huge amount of collectible “stuff,” but very sensibly segregates weapons and other usable objects from sellable “salvage” that doesn’t count against the inventory limit. The first Mass Effect employs all of these mechanics, resulting in an overloaded inventory system that requires an aggravating amount of micromanagement.
Usually there are stores and/or merchants where gear can be purchased in addition, sometimes the player is gifted with new objects and valuables on completion of a challenge, or sometimes the player opens chests or smashes boxes, or searches the bodies of dead enemies, to find and collect the guns and doodads. One of them is a very common convention found in many games - the “loot” system, i.e., the mechanic by which the player accumulates tools and treasure throughout the game. This kind of new-idea-oh-never-mind problem can be found all the way down into the game’s smallest details.